Category: General

Employers want people who can do the jobs that require their business to be successful, and certain job titles and skills are more in demand than others. However, after working as corporate recruiter and with hundreds of businesses, I have a short list of skills that I think are absolutely sought after by all employers, regardless of the industry or job titles they hire for.

The 4 Cs

• Conscientiousness
• Creativity
• Collaboration
• Communication

Time spent developing these skills is critical to the success of anyone preparing for or in the job market.

I’ll spend the next few weeks describing what these skills are and provide a list of things to do that can help develop these skills.   Yes, they are developable.  Although some people are born with more innate ability in some of these than others, they all can be defined and developed in concrete ways.

The First C: Conscientiousness

Conscientiousness is one of the most noted personality traits that is a predictor of job performance.  It’s also described as initiative.   You can read more about some characteristics and studies on things related to conscientious in this previous post, but I think an example of what conscientiousness looks like through behaviors that a person demonstrates is more helpful.

An Example

I’ve recently had an I/O grad student working with me on a community wage survey.   The faculty of the program (where I completed my Masters in I/O) selected her as an ideal candidate for this project, notably because of her interest in compensation.   I also indicated that I needed a self-starter who could stay focused while working on tedious data analysis and have the ability to meet a tight deadline.   AKA a conscientious person.

Man did I get her!  She was the poster child of conscientiousness!

Here are some behaviors she exhibited:

• She arrived early for our first meeting for me to train her on how to do the data analysis.   With a 2 hour drive to get here, she planned accordingly and allotted herself more time to arrive just in case something came up on the way.
• She asked thoughtful questions when needed in order to make sure she had an understanding of what was being asked of her to complete.
• She lent suggestions about how to arrive at getting something done when she had a better method, and did so in a polite, helpful manner.
• She worked remotely and handled her time to complete the project with zero supervision.
• She was patient with me in my response to her email questions when I was out of town.   When I wasn’t answering a question right away, she moved on to work on other parts she didn’t have questions about instead of letting my absence get her behind.  THIS IS KEY!  Most people do not do this, they use it as an excuse not to complete work on time.
• She created job aids for herself to remind her of steps that needed to be taken on each data set to make sure she did it correctly and consistently.
• She clarified specific deadlines.  I told her I needed the completed survey to me on Wednesday, she asked for a specific time on Wednesday.
• She turned the project in an hour early.
• She performed every task asked of her correctly.  She followed directions.

So, what tips can I glean from this to establish conscientiousness for myself so employers want to hire me?

Behaviors are cultivated through habits.  Here are behaviors, based on this example you need to get in the habit of doing:

1. Arrive early (and plan ahead to give yourself enough time to do so).
2. Follow directions.
3. Before you can follow directions, you have to listen to directions and/or read them!  Do this by eliminating distractions when you need to listen, and writing things down when necessary.
4. Ask clarifying questions.
5. Make suggestions in order to help people be more successful.
6. Don’t wait on someone to prompt you to do something. Monitor yourself in getting work done; don’t rely on someone else to do it for you.   If your mom is always asking you to get your homework done or your boss is always asking for a certain task to be completed, you aren’t demonstrating conscientious behaviors.
7. Complete work on what you can when you are waiting on information from someone else.  Do not use someone else’s absence as an excuse to quit working.
8. Create tools that help you remember things in order to do things right the first time and consistently.  Oftentimes, all this needs to be is a checklist.
9. Turn in assignments early; don’t procrastinate.

Who do you know that is successful in their job or in school because they are conscientious?  What do they DO to show people they are conscientious?

3 THINGS THE PROS DO

I think we’ve all at one time or another been on the side of the recruiting process where it felt like a hurry up and wait game.  Applying for a job and jumping through the hoops to get it always seems to be a mind-numbingly slow process.  Even in my days as a recruiter, I often became frustrated with the slow process, particularly when I had a candidate that was perfect for a job and I was anxious to hire him or her.

Despite the snails pace of hiring that can become frustrating, I was reminded at the Alabama SHRM conference about the importance of hiring slow, not because you’re taking too long, but because you have the right processes in place to select the best people.  Dawn Hrdlica-Burke with Daxko spoke about employee engagement, and emphasized that at Daxko, they hire slow which leads to more a more engaged workforce.  They take their time making sure they have the right candidate.

At Daxko, they do three things as a part of their slow hiring process:

Give candidates homework that relates to the job

What I like about this:  It is an exercise in: 1) Do they have the skills for the job? 2) Do they have initiative and follow-through (which is necessary for almost every job out there)? and 3) It is gives them a realistic job preview of the work they are going to do, which connects to hiring for fit.  They may perform the homework, and screen themselves out because they don’t like the task assigned.

Conduct a peer-to-peer interviews

What I like about this:  Oftentimes peers can see positive or negative characteristics in a candidate that hiring managers don’t see.  It also assesses ability to work with others, which again, what job doesn’t require these days?

Want to combine both #1 and #2 with one exercise?   You might enjoy reading this earlier post on hiring.

Hire for fit.

What I like about this:  First, hiring for fit implies that you have defined your company culture in ways that connects to competences you are looking for in candidates.   This leads to the expectation that 1)  People will further your company values and culture and 2) They will stay because their values are aligned with company values.   Want more info on this?  You may find this guest post I did for upstartHR post useful.

What’s your best selection tip to lead to an engaged employee?

5 QUESTIONS TO ASK YOURSELF ABOUT FLOW IN THE WORKPLACE

I’ve recently finished reading,Flow, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, which discusses how people can improve their lives by cultivating optimal experiences.  Flow is a state where people control their inner experiences, regardless of outward influences.  Many people describe flow as a state in which they loose all track of time in what they are doing because they enjoy it so much. People who experience flow report feeling “strong” “active” “creative” “concentrated” and “motivated”.

The author describes a flow experience as one where people are in-between the states of “boredom and anxiety” and postulates that in this state people are pushed to higher levels of performance and they actually enjoy it.

Based on the studies conducted by the author, people are more likely to experience flow at work that at leisure.  Here are some questions to ask yourself in considering whether the work people do for you leads to flow:

1.  Does the work require above average challenges? Is it difficult, but accomplishable?
2. Does the work require people to use above average skills? Does it give people an opportunity to develop skills?
3. Does the work have built in goals?
4.  Does the work provide feedback in performance?
5.  Are there rules that govern the work?  Are there ways to keep the work from being too ambiguous?

These questions relate to what Hackman and Oldman site in Work Redesign as key factors in of reaching the outcomes of internal motivation, job satisfaction, performance quality, low absenteeism and low turnover:

Job Dimensions:

Skill Variety

Task Identity (How much of the work is completed by one person as a part of a process?)

Task Significance (Is the work important?)

Autonomy

Feedback

Psychological States:

Experienced Meaningfulness

Felt Responsibility

Knowledge of Results

Growth Need Strength (Did this help me grow as an individual?)

When have you experienced flow at work and what were the key characteristics of what you were doing that led to this experience?

We’ve been following the career decision-making path of Graham by looking at his talents, passions and values to find appropriate job matches.   Much of what we’ve done so far requires matching personal characteristics with specific occupations.

This is a very helpful process, but it doesn’t negate the reality that life happens and sometimes you’ve got to jump start your career pathway with action that may or may not lead to the specific careers targeted in your career exploration activities.

John Krumboltz’s, (who with Ed Levine wrote, Luck is No Accident), career development theory is one of “planned happenstance”.   Basically, this view is that people in career development should help people learn to create more satisfying lives for themselves, and this doesn’t necessarily mean pointing someone towards a specific occupation.  It does mean helping people create action steps related to their career that will lead to life satisfaction.

How does planned happenstance work?

When Graham was about to graduate from college, the economy had just tanked.  He graduated at a time when 80% of college graduates moved back in with mom and dad because they didn’t have a job or didn’t have a job that paid enough to allow them to live on their own.

During Graham’s last semester of college, I talked with him about next steps after college without any career assessments or inventories.   He loved his entrepreneurship major and had done well academically, had worked as a Capstone Man (a highly coveted college ambassador spot that allowed him to rub noses frequently with high powered people in our state), had been the President of the Freshman Leadership group and had worked for Joseph A. Banks part-time.   He had taken action steps (towards a satisfying life) in college by engaging in activities that made him more marketable and more connected than most  students, but the economy was still terrible.

So what was his next action step?  He took several including talking to people in venture capital because he had developed an interest in the field through his major and considered briefly going into business with my dad and uncle.  His key action step related to his current career came when he saw an article in a southern magazine about Billy Reid moving their corporate office to Florence, Alabama from Dallas. The article focused the company’s entrepreneurial spirit and desire to re-invent men’s fashion with a focus on southern style.

Graham was intrigued and most people would have left it at that.  But he sent the company his resume and cover letter focusing on his interest in men’s fashion and desire to stay in Alabama.   He had no idea if they were hiring, but he took the action step anyway. They called him within two days and he accepted a summer internship with them.

He could have backed off because it wasn’t a full-time, permanent job offer, but after talking with them, he felt like it was the right step for him.   Because of his hard work (he did grunt work like paint the new store along with other business related tasks) he was offered the full-time role of Director of E-Commerce three months after starting and has been growing with the company in his career ever since.

4 Actions for Planned Happenstance

$1·      Take the step to get involved in things that allow you the opportunity to network and demonstrate leadership

$1·      Read and stay current on your interest areas and companies of interest and “apply” with them by demonstrating your passion for what they do even if they don’t have a posted opening.

$1·      Working hard in a less than ideal role in an industry and/or with a company you like can lead you to the right spot in your career

$1·      BOTTOM LINE:  ACT even if you don’t know where it is going to lead.   It may land you in the job of your dreams if you follow your intuition.

Next week, we’ll discuss how the job market encompasses this whole diagram, your talents, passions and values in determining career decisions.